For its prime-time Olympic coverage Tuesday night, NBC was expected to direct much of its focus to Shaun White’s bid for a gold medal in the snowboarding halfpipe event.

White, after all, was among a handful of marquee American names heavily promoted by NBC coming into the Games. (One ad, aired during the Super Bowl, concluded that “Shaun White is the best of U.S.”). And if he’s able to strike gold gold, it would be the kind of dramatic, feel-good comeback story TV craves: An American hero and all that stuff.

But one thing wasn’t so certain going into Tuesday’s coverage: Would NBC continue to avoid mentioning the fact that White was the target of a highly disturbing sexual harassment lawsuit?

(UPDATE: NBC predictably opened its prime-time coverage with a spotlight feature on White and American skier Mikaela Shiffrin. “Do they have the right stuff?” host Mike Tirico wondered. So far, no mention of the lawsuit).

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In August 2016, Lena Zawaideh, who formerly was a drummer in White’s rock band Bad Things, accused the snowboarding legend of sexual harassment in a suit filed in San Diego. She alleged that White "repeatedly sexually harassed her and forced his authoritarian management style on her for over seven years."

Zawaideh and White reached an undisclosed settlement in May 2017.

In her complaint, Zawaideh claimed that White “sent sexually explicit and graphic images to Zawaideh of engorged and erect penises, forced her to watch sexually disturbing videos, including videos sexualizing human fecal matter, and made vulgar sexual remarks to her. (Her full complaint can be read on Deadspin).

The complaint alleges that White’s behavior got worse after he failed to win a medal in Sochi in 2014 — that he "became increasingly hostile and threatening.”

In February 2017, White requested that the San Diego Superior Court compel Zawaideh to undergo a mental health evaluation. Three months after that, the two parties reached their settlement.

Josh Levin, a reporter for Slate.com, astutely points out that it’s not just NBC that failed to take note of Zawaideh’s allegations and the subsequent settlement. He conducted a Nexis database search in which he found that no major news outlet mentioned the harassment suit between May 2017 and last week, when New York magazine’s the Cut released a video titled, "Snowboarding Superstar Shaun White Was Accused of Sexual Harassment."

Three days later, reports Levin, the San Diego Union-Tribune’s Mark Zeigler included the suit in a list of "White’s obstacles to return to a fourth Olympics." For the record, Time.com had a post about the lawsuit earlier today. And so did The Daily Beast. The latter post included a tagline referring to the lawsuit and asking: “Why is no one talking about it?”

Levin apparently tried to compel NBC to answer “a series of questions about whether it was aware of the allegations against White, whether the network planned to mention the allegations or settlement on air, or whether it would ask White about the claims in an interview.” Levin says NBC declined to reply.

The allegations against White have resurfaced amid the #MeToo movement and a national reckoning over the treatment of women in the workplace. Even NBC found itself in the middle of the mess, recently firing “Today” show host Matt Lauer after multiple allegations of sexual misconduct were leveled against him.

Now, it will be interesting to see if the allegations against White work their way into the network’s Olympic narrative. … Or would that just make for bad TV?